As one of the most effective medical technologies for the infertile patients, in vitro fertilization has been more and more widely developed in recent years. However, prolonged waiting for IVF procedures has become a problem of great concern, since this technology is only mastered by the large general hospitals. To deal with the insufficiency of IVF service capacity, this paper studies an IVF queuing network in an integrated cloud healthcare system, where the two key medical services, that is, egg retrieval (...) and transplantation, are assigned to accomplish in the general hospital, while the routine medical tests are assigned into the community hospital. Based on continuous-time Markov procedure, a dynamic large-scale server scheduling problem in this complicated service network is modeled with consideration of different arrival rates of multiple type of patients and different service capacities of multiple servers that can be defined as doctors of the general hospital. To solve this model, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed, where the reward functions are designed for four conflicting subcosts: setup cost, patient waiting cost, penalty cost for unsatisfied patient personal preferences, and medical cost of patient. The experimental results show that the optimal service rule of each server’s queue obtained by the RL method is significantly superior to the traditional service rule. (shrink)

Empathy is essential for human survival and social interaction. Although mindfulness-based interventions have been used to improve empathy in healthy populations, its therapeutic efficacy remains unknown. This study aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of MBIs on empathy in a healthy population and the potential factors affecting the efficacy of MBIs. The literature search focused on PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and CNKI from inception to September 2022. Randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies reporting the effects of using (...) MBIs on empathy in healthy populations were included. A total of 13 studies were included in this review. Results of the meta-analysis showed that MBIs improved empathy in the healthy population compared with that in the control group. Moreover, results of the subgroup analysis showed that intervention dose, format, and types were important factors affecting treatment outcomes. This comprehensive review suggests that MBIs are effective treatment for empathy in healthy population. Future research should markedly focus on large-sample, rigorously designed experiments to explore the long-term effects of MBIs on empathy and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of MBIs. This study provides a reference for the daily application of MBIs. (shrink)

Despite urgent calls for more research on the integration of business ethics and the meaning of work, to date, there have been few corresponding efforts, and we know surprisingly little about this relationship. In this study, we address this issue by examining when and for whom ethical leadership is more effective in promoting a sense of work meaningfulness among employees, and their subsequent work attitudes. Drawing on the contingency theories of leadership and work meaningfulness literature, we speculate that both employees’ (...) core self-evaluation and perceived organizational support moderate the relationship, but in different ways, and these associations carry over to employees’ subsequent work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data collected from 377 employees. Results indicate that ethical leadership is effective in eliciting work meaningfulness and attitudes for employees higher in CSE or when POS is lower, and ineffective for those lower in CSE or when POS is higher. A supplementary analysis reveals a three-way interaction between ethical leadership, CSE and POS in predicting a sense of work meaningfulness and subsequent work attitudes. Our research cautions that ethical leadership is not a universally positive practice; it can be ineffective or even have a negative impact under some circumstances. (shrink)

While robots were traditionally built to achieve economic efficiency and financial profits, their roles are likely to change in the future with the aim to provide social support and companionship. In this research, we examined whether the robot’s proposed function (social vs. economic) impacts judgments of mind and moral treatment. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated that robots with social function were perceived to possess greater ability for emotional experience, but not cognition, compared to those with economic function and whose function (...) was not mentioned explicitly. Study 2 replicated this finding and further showed that low economic value reduced ascriptions of cognitive capacity, whereas high social value resulted in increased emotion perception. In Study 3, robots with high social value were more likely to be afforded protection from harm, and such effect was related to levels of ascribed emotional experience. Together, the findings demonstrate a dissociation between function type (social vs. economic) and ascribed mind (emotion vs. cognition). In addition, the two types of functions exert asymmetric influences on the moral treatment of robots. Theoretical and practical implications for the field of social psychology and human-computer interaction are discussed. (shrink)

Dong Zhongshu (Tung Chung-shu) (179-104 B.C.E.) was the first prominent Confucian to integrate yin-yang theory into Confucianism. His constructive effort not only generates a new perspective on yin and yang, it also involves implications beyond its explicit contents. First, Dong changes the natural harmony (he ﾈﾱ) of yin and yang to an imposed unity (he 合). Second, he identifies yang with human nature (xing) and benevolence (ren), and yin with emotion (qing) and greed (tan). Taken together, these novelties grant a (...) philosophical basis for the theory and practice of gender inequality in their specifically Chinese manifestations. An analysis of Dong's work shows that the merce complementarity of yin and yang does not guarantee gender equality; they are not fixed categories, but together form a transformative dynamic harmony. (shrink)

Stochastic forecasts in complex environments can benefit from combining the estimates of large groups of forecasters (“judges”). But aggregating multiple opinions faces several challenges. First, human judges are notoriously incoherent when their forecasts involve logically complex events. Second, individual judges may have specialized knowledge, so different judges may produce forecasts for different events. Third, the credibility of individual judges might vary, and one would like to pay greater attention to more trustworthy forecasts. These considerations limit the value of simple aggregation (...) methods like linear averaging. In this paper, a new algorithm is proposed for combining probabilistic assessments from a large pool of judges. Two measures of a judge’s likely credibility are introduced and used in the algorithm to determine the judge’s weight in aggregation. The algorithm was tested on a data set of nearly half a million probability estimates of events related to the 2008 U.S. presidential election (∼ 16000 judges). (shrink)

This study investigated the associations between university teachers’ emotional job demands, teaching support, and well-being, and examined the mediating effect of emotional regulation strategies (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) in the job demands-resources (JD-R) model. The results of a survey of 643 university teachers in mainland China indicated that emotional job demands and teaching support, which facilitated teachers’ use of reappraisal strategies, had desirable effects on their well-being. Reappraisal was beneficial to teachers’ well-being, and suppression was harmful. These findings support the (...) mediation role of emotional regulation, and evidence the applicability of the JD-R model to a higher education context. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article proposes a posthumanist reading of knowledge in Zhuangzi and Jacques Lacan from four interconnected aspects. First, knowledge is inseparable from practice, as is exemplified in Lacan’s original rewriting of Zhuangzi’s ‘agreement between name and actuality’ as the dialectic relationship between Other and other. Then, knowledge leads us to explore the mysterious knowledge behind the surface, which resists linguistic expression and defies human agency. Furthermore, the importance of the mysterious knowledge compels us to figure out the accesses to reach (...) this unknown territory. Finally, the availability of the opaque knowledge, in a circular form, returns to the beginning question albeit on a more advanced level: the methods of putting the unknown knowledge into practice. Apart from these four logical aspects, the new perspective of posthumanism enables us to go beyond anthropocentric understanding of knowledge and bracket it within a broad framework of cross-species becoming. (shrink)

In this paper, we define a first-order logic CFʹ with strong negation and bounded static quantifiers, which is a variant of Thomason's logic CF. For the logic CFʹ, the usual Kripke formal semantics is defined based on situations, and a sound and complete axiomatic system is established based on the axiomatic systems of constructive logics with strong negation and Thomason's completeness proof techniques. With the use of bounded quantifiers, CFʹ allows the domain of quantification to be empty and allows for (...) nondenoting constants. CFʹ is intended as a fragment of a logic for situation theory. Thus the connection between CFʹ and infon logic is discussed. (shrink)

Firms have been increasingly using social commerce platforms to engage with customers and support their brand value co-creation. While social commerce is now bringing a variety of benefits to business, it has also challenged marketing ethics surrounding online consumer privacy. Drawing on the trust-commitment theory, we develop a model that aims to create an ethical and trustworthy social commerce community for brand value co-creation by examining the impacts of online consumer privacy concerns and social interaction constructs on consumers’ psychological reactions. (...) Using an empirical study, we find that: privacy risk, privacy control, and collaborative norms significantly influence consumers’ trust; consumer-peer interaction and collaborative norms are positively related to relationship commitment; and relationship commitment and trust positively affect consumers’ brand value co-creation in the context of social commerce. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Disjunctivism is the view that perceptual experience is either constituted by fact in the world or mere appearance. This view is said to be able to guarantee our cognitive contact with the world, and thus remove a crucial “prop” upon which skepticism depends. This paper has two aims. First, it aims to show that disjunctivism is a solution to Cartesian skepticism. Cartesian skepticism is an epistemological thesis, not an ontological one. Therefore, if there is an external world, we may well (...) undergo a veridical experience, and thus we can take advantage of disjunctivism to adopt an anti-evidential-skepticism strategy to counter Cartesian skepticism. Second, this paper argues that disjunctivism fails to solve Pyrrhonian skepticism. To counter Pyrrhonian skepticism, one has to give reasons both for his belief and for his believing. But disjunctivism can only account the former, that is, the reason for the content of perceptual belief. Given that one’s experience in good case and bad case is subjectively indistinguishable, one cannot just use his experience to justify his believing. This shows that disjunctivism cannot meet the requirement to provide an adequate account for reflective knowledge. (shrink)

Through a Confucian critique of modern colonial politics and the failure of Western conscience in a number of historical and literary settings (including the Opium Wars, the Holocaust and the modern slavery), the article criticizes the illusory foundation and inexorable predicaments of modern imperialism. The goal of my investigation is to break open the normative authority of modern Western ideologies so as to initiate a new horizon for the hermeneutics of Confucianism and to suggest an alternative vision of humanity and (...) cosmopolitanism in Confucianism. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility reporting on firms’ financial reporting quality using a quasi-natural experiment in China that mandates a subset of firms to report their CSR activities starting in 2008. We find that mandatory CSR disclosure firms constrain earnings management after the policy. The result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests and more prominent for firms with lower analyst coverage. Further analyses reveal that upward earnings management by mandatory disclosure firms is more (...) likely to be caught after the policy. The findings suggest that mandatory CSR disclosure mitigates information asymmetry by improving financial reporting quality. (shrink)

This study examines the mediating role of rumination, state anger, and blame attribution, and the moderating role of trait forgiveness in the relationship between workplace harassment intensity and revenge among employed students at a medium-sized Midwestern U.S. university and full-time employees from various industries in Shanghai, China. We tested the proposed model using techniques described by Hayes. Results within both samples suggested that workplace harassment intensity is positively associated with both major and minor revenge. Results of multiple mediation tests showed (...) that state anger and blame attribution mediated the relationships between workplace harassment intensity and both types of revenge behavior. Furthermore, trait forgiveness moderated the relationship between blame attribution and major revenge. (shrink)

Epistemic protocols are communication protocols aiming at transfer of knowledge in a controlled way. Typically, the preconditions or goals for protocol actions depend on the knowledge of agents, often in nested form. Informal epistemic protocol descriptions for muddy children, coordinated attack, dining cryptographers, Russian cards, secret key exchange are well known. The contribution of this paper is a formal study of a natural requirement on epistemic protocols, that the contents of the protocol can be assumed to be common knowledge. By (...) formalizing this requirement we can prove that there can be no unbiased deterministic protocol for the Russian cards problem. For purposes of our formal analysis we introduce an epistemic protocol language, and we show that its model checking problem is decidable. (shrink)

This paper discusses how a Platform for Philosophy Education can help to alleviate issues of alienation in the lives of university students. This is done through various personal cultivation and community building activities in the Academic Philosophy Café. The activities draw from philosophical traditions, including traditions with religious or “spiritual” elements. These encourage reflection on one’s place in the world. In addition, students and teachers cooperate to ensure the smooth running of the café and activities, which strengthens the community bond. (...) There is thus a “spiritual contract” formed between participants. In contrast to a written contract that binds parties by means of explicit rewards or sanctions, a “spiritual contract” is built on mutual understanding that higher-level needs will be met through the process of cooperation. Based upon this, a community is established that nourishes the lives of those on campus, benefits their wellbeing and strengthens their capacity to learn effectively. (shrink)

This study investigated whether ruminating on an intrusive thought before sleeping led to an increased likelihood of dreaming of threatening events. One hundred and forty-six participants were randomly assigned to a rumination condition and a control condition. Participants completed a dream diary upon waking. The result showed that presleep ruminating on an intrusive thought increased the frequency of both threatening dreams and negative emotions in dreams. In addition, dreams with threatening events were more emotional and negative than dreams without threatening (...) events. These results may support the threat simulation theory of dreaming. In addition, these results may give some insight into a mathematical model for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. (shrink)

Cognitive diagnostic models show great promise in language assessment for providing rich diagnostic information. The lack of a full understanding of second language listening subskills made model selection difficult. In search of optimal CDM that could provide a better understanding of L2 listening subskills and facilitate accurate classification, this study carried a two-layer model selection. At the test level, A-CDM, LLM, and R-RUM had an acceptable and comparable model fit, suggesting mixed inter-attribute relationships of L2 listening subskills. At the item (...) level, Mixed-CDMs were selected and confirmed the existence of mixed relationships. Mixed-CDMs had better model and person fit than G-DNIA. In addition to statistical approaches, the content analysis provided theoretical evidence to confirm and amend the item-level CDMs. It was found that semantic completeness pertaining to the attributes and item features may influence the attribute relationships. Inexplicable attribute conflicts could be a signal of suboptimal model choice. Sample size and the number of multi-attribute items should be taken into account in L2 listening cognitive diagnostic modeling studies. This study provides useful insights into the model selection and the underlying cognitive process for L2 listening tests. (shrink)

In this paper, a concise robust control law based on Backstepping for marine engine speed regulation is presented with the uniform asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system proved by Lyapunov synthesis, and the control parameters have obvious physical meaning. Furthermore, parameter determination method is given by virtue of closed-loop gain shaping algorithm. To overcome the perturbation due to load or interference change, variable universe fuzzy inference is introduced to optimize the control system on-line. Compared with the existing research literature, the (...) design method and performance of the controller are more in line with the ocean engineering practice. The results of the simulations of the proposed controller are presented and compared. (shrink)

Although the major part of the chapter’s investigation is on the mode and acts of remembering in Chan Buddhism, Wang opens with a survey of the traditional Indian Buddhist context of remembering, its differentiation of wholesome and unwholesome acts of remembering, and its critique of unwholesome and discursive modes of memory, as Buddhism evolves from Theravada to Mahayana. This context is a necessary condition under which the interaction between Indian and Chinese Buddhist ideologies, or between the inherited tradition and (...) its Chinese Chan appropriation, becomes possible. Wang then examines how Chan masters, from early to classical period, appropriate and develop the traditional distinction of wholesome and unwholesome remembrance and its affirmation of the former and critique of the latter in a Chinese context. As opposed to the widespread Chan hierarchy of forgetfulness over remembrance that has shaped much of our modern understanding, Wang presents a rediscovery of Chan teachings on remembrance, disclosing how remembrance is related to the internal tension between the positive attitude towards the traditional cultivation and the iconoclastic attitude towards it in various Chan ideologies. The approach of these examinations is a combination of textual/contextual inquiry, conceptual analysis and philosophical interpretation. The part of “summary and reflections” includes a review of the uniqueness of the Chan mode of remembering, an analysis of its ethical dimension by using, and comparing it with, Ricoeur’s ethics of memory, and an exploration of the paradoxical relationship between remembering and forgetting. (shrink)

The Slow Movement brought with itself a focus on the speed of our living, and a desire to slow down our daily activities, including movement activities. Also, in the time of the current pandemic, m...

Dialetheism is the view that there are true contradictions. Classical dialetheism holds further the view that the law of excluded middle is indeed a logical law. Most famous dialetheists, such as G. Priest and J. Beall, are classical dialetheists; they take classical dialetheism to be the only plausible solution to the semantic paradoxes. The main contention of the paper is, however, that their views should be rejected. Based on inspecting Priest’s and Beall’s dialetheist theories from a special perspective, this paper (...) contends that classical dialetheism has no natural and plausible way to assign truth values to various truth-ineliminable sentences, i.e., sentences whose truth-conditions essentially involve the property of being true . Several examples of such truth-ineliminable sentences are given in the paper, and two classical dialetheist strategies for assigning them truth values are inspected. This paper argues that none of these strategies is successful. (shrink)

This paper introduces the history and the present situation of Chinese scholarly research on "Chinese modernity." Due to the limited amount of source materials, this outline is concise and sketchy. Before explaining the tendencies and the characteristics of Chinese scholars' research on modernity, we must first give an overview of the historical sequence of the trends and theories on modernization that were introduced in China from the West and Japan.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Refugee concerns may be perceived as controversial or outside the business domain, yet some corporations publicly engage these issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This article relies on institutional and constitutive approaches to CSR to explore why organizations might declare their engagement in refugee issues, and utilizes decoupling to explore the relationship between reported CSR policy and CSR activity. We utilize a mixed-method, content analysis approach to draw on Fortune Global 500 CSR reports between 2012 and 2019, a period (...) in which refugee activity increased around the world. Our research suggests that few corporations offer refugee programming and fewer still feature programs that are “coupled” with either CSR policies or impacts. We introduce a typology that depicts these corporations as reactionary, recurring, relevant, or revelatory, and offer constitutive implications for CSR programming in response to other emerging social issues. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to determine whether consent forms in oncology clinical trials of commercially available treatments inform subjects that they may be able to obtain the treatments being investigated without participating in research. We acquired consent forms from a random sample of U.S. oncology clinical trials in the ClinicalTrials.gov database. We then examined a subgroup of the sample consisting of studies in which the treatments under investigations were commercially available. Less than 20% of the consent forms in (...) that group disclosed to subjects that they may be able to obtain the treatment being investigated without participating in the study . Our results suggest that potential research subjects are frequently not informed about important alternatives to research participation in studies involving commercially available treatments, which is a violation of both ethical and regulatory standards. (shrink)

Although I do not have any final thoughts about the present topic, it might still be valuable to identify what questions are bothering many Chinese scholars. During an academic meeting last month Professor Yu Dunkang summarized the embarrassing situation confronting the study of Chinese philosophy today, as follows: "The object remains unclear, and the value is misplaced." The phrase "the object remains unclear" means that scholars are not sure what questions need to be studied in relation to what is called (...) "Chinese philosophy," while the phrase "the value is misplaced" means that scholars misunderstand the value and the meaning of their own work. To a large extent, this summary is correct; but the question is how this particular situation came into being. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

The rising cost of the opioid antagonist and overdose reversal agent naloxone is an urgent public health problem. The recent and dramatic price increase of Evzio, a naloxone auto-injector produced by Kaléo, shows how pharmaceutical manufacturers entering the naloxone marketplace rely on market exclusivity guaranteed by the patent system to charge prices at what the market can bear, which can restrict access to life-saving medication. We argue that 28 U.S.C. § 1498, a section of the federal code that allows the (...) government to use patent-protected products for its own purposes in exchange for reasonable compensation, could be used to procure generic naloxone auto-injectors, or at least bring Kaléo to the negotiating table. Precedent exists for the use of § 1498 to procure pharmaceuticals, and it could give meaning to the federal government's recent declaration of a public health emergency around the opioid epidemic, discourage new market entrants from charging exorbitant prices, and yield important public health benefits. (shrink)

AbstractThe notion of techné in Husserl’s phenomenology is related to his treatment of the three layers of the “teaching of craft” and the two layers of the science of “life-world.” The superior layer of both is of philosophical significance. Aristotle’s statement in ethics and metaphysics: techné is man-made, but can transit to spontaneity, and then to natural becoming, which manifests physis as the ultimate aim of his philosophical system, enlightens us to notice the following aspects in Husserl’s phenomenology. 1. Pure (...) or formal ethics is of a high-level téchne in the philosophical sense. 2. The concept of life-world leads to transcendental phenomenology. 3. What Ideas II implies – as a technique the method of phenomenology tends to let the pure I and spiritual I as matters appear themselves by the natural attitude – could conduct us to understand the artistic aspect of Husserl’s philosophical theory. (shrink)

Social interaction, especially for older people living alone is a challenge currently facing human-robot interaction (HRI). There has been little research on user preference towards HRI interfaces. In this paper, we took both objective observations and participants’ opinions into account in studying older users with a robot partner. The developed dual-modal robot interface offered older users options of speech or touch screen to perform tasks. Fifteen people aged from 70 to 89 years old, participated. We analyzed the spontaneous actions of (...) the participants, including their attentional activities and conversational activities, the temporal characteristics of these social behaviours, as well as questionnaires. It has been revealed that social engagement with the robot demonstrated by older people was no different from what might be expected towards a human partner. This study is an early attempt to reveal the social connections between human beings and a personal robot in real life. (shrink)